Rudder Failures

[smackdaddy]

Originally Posted by Nicholson58

HOW long ago did we stop taling 'bout rudders?

We're talking about boats. That's good enough.

[smackdaddy]

Originally Posted by gjorgensen

A little digression, but this is not true. While PHRF handicaps are region specific, most PHRF boards handicap for typical overall performance focused primarily on windward/leward courses. No one runs triangle courses any more to speak of, and you'd have to look at each regions rules, but the regions with which I'm familiar do not handicap for triangle courses.

In Southern California a 3 number system is used: One rating for buoy (windward/leward) courses, one for random leg (mixture of anything and everything), and one for off wind courses (where at lest 2/3 of the race is expected to be offwind). Nor Cal is now similar. How you might apply those to cruising is up to you, but the RLC number would probably give you the best indicator of overall performance and OWC might be useful for the trades (if your trades are actually pretty uniform).

That said, PHRF always assumes an optimal setup in terms of weight and drag, and the full manufacturer specified sailplan, which may include a spinnaker. How the boat will perform in cruising trim, stuffed with stuff, and not flying a spinnaker will be wildly variable by boat. For example, the Outbound 44/46 has a PHRF rating in several regions. In cruising trim and use in the trades, I'd expect the Outbound to perform much closer to that PHRF handicap than my First 40.7 would in similar trim, weight, and use, if for no other reason than my boat would suffer more greatly from increased weight (of stuff) and lack of spinnaker than the Outbound would.

Also FYI the only Hawaii race using PHRF is Pacific Cup and they use the specific Nor Cal offwind rating. Trans Pac uses its own ratings.

Thank you. The goofiness was getting out of hand.

Triangles. Sigh.

[SimonV]

Originally Posted by Nicholson58

HOW long ago did we stop taling 'bout rudders?

We are moving down the boat. Don't worry we will be back to the rudder shortly.

Sent from my GT-N7105T using Cruisers Sailing Forum mobile app

[smackdaddy]

Okay - I've learned 3 things:

1. Some dudes will say LITERALLY ANYTHING to try to maintain their seriously weak argument. Polux is really good at mopping the floor with them - but please, guys, have some dignity here. Read what's actually posted before you wax poetic. And stick to the facts...that you actually know.

2. As long as the subject is boats and sailing, who gives a damn where the thread meanders? This has been a very educational and entertaining read. And it's just getting started. So stay frosty.

3. Even guys I disagree vehemently in this thread are guys I'd definitely share a beer with. NielP and I have busted each other's teeth a few times, but he's still willing to give me some solid advice when I need it.

That, my friends, is sailors. And that's why this crazy world of sailing is so damn cool.

[robert sailor]

Originally Posted by Polux

That is a new one Normally I hear that modern light performance boats are great dowind but that with an heavy sea upwind bla bla bla

It is the first time that I hear that a light performance boat will have any problem in beating an heavy cruiser downwind and that in fact makes no sense because modern light performance cruisers can easily go downwind at semi-planning speeds and some to full planing speeds while an heavy boat will never raise is fat ass to go faster then hull speed. I thought that was common knowledge. In fact it is upwind on heavy seas where the difference in speed between a performance cruiser and a heavy cruisers is smaller.

I won't debate that your light weight racer will go by a heavy cruiser downwind however we are talking about cruising boats here, long term cruising boats. You post up pictures of boats that you think will make fast cruisers so we are not talking about pure race boats where every last pound is removed. These are not boats that are set up for cruising from port to port in the Med but boats that are loaded with many thousands of pounds of gear and supplies and well down on their water lines.
Your lightweight racer loaded up like this will no longer be light weight racer and it will also not be a semi planner unless its really blowing.
If it can't be loaded down as I laid out then it is not a boat that can be considered for serious cruising, sure fine for the Med and your type of sailing but not real world wide cruising.
Even your views on cruising in a Pogo are really over the top, yes they are fast race boats but hardly can be taken serious for actually world cruising.
You boys in the Med really don't know a lot about the boats that world wide cruisers choose. No we cruisers don't go home in the winter we keep sailing or we sail to a country outside the hurricane zone which makes many of the racers you post here very poor choices. Get your head out of the Med for a little while and find out what kind of choices most world cruisers make when they decide which boat will be a good choice and then show me pictures of them in Patagonian and the far reaches of the South Pacific.

[Polux]

Originally Posted by Jim Cate

Paulo, it seems that what you are saying is that the Pogoesque type of cruising boat is great for folks who like that sort of cruising... that's sort of a no-brainer IMO.

By your own definition, Med cruising isn't full time, but seasonal. The boats are put away for the winter, usually on the hard if I understand you correctly. This is a good opportunity for the owner to have the boats serviced and made whole again for the upcoming summer. No need to carry the sorts of spares and tools and clothes for all seasons and food and water and fuel for long periods away from support that many long term cruisers load their boats with.

This is my point: what you define as cruising fits the Pogo style boat quite well. I'm forced to wonder if those boats fit MY style of cruising. Perhaps they will... you don't seem to answer questions about how they sail when overloaded with cruising gear. You may argue that such loads are not really required, and that may be true... yet virtually all long term cruisers do overload their boats with such gear and supplies.

Please note that I am not saying they are bad boats or that one can not go cruising in them, at least in the seasonal Med style of cruising.

Cheers,

Jim

Jim,

No way I am saying that the Pogo would make your cruising style. in fact it does not make mine too. I am not enough spartan or Zen for that but i know that some others are. It is not what we could call a main market boat, a boat to satisfy the vast majority.

Regarding cruising on the Med you are right, but that can be also said and with more reason about cruising in winter in Europe. In winter here is what we call out of season. Sure you have some nice days on winter and you can take the boat out of the marina to have a nice sail or oven sail for a week if you are lucky, but cruising in a sense that it is having the boat at anchor and move around everyday or almost, like I use to day at summer, certainly not.

I remember a nice movie and story of an american guy, good sailor, him and his wife, delivery skippers, that on his boat, already in spring waited more than a month to come down from Porto, on the Portuguese coast to the med. They tried one time...and were forced to return. And that is not cruising but just to sail the boat, kind of delivery, to more agreeable waters for cruising.

It seems that tere is some confusion here regarding what is cruising. You and Robert seem to live on the boat and therefore have the need to "cruise" permanently but that is just not what 99% of the ones that cruise do. I cruise about 4 months, making 2500nm a a year and i know that I am on the 5% of cruisers that make more miles each year. Even most of the ones that live aboard all year make considerably less then that. Many just stay several weeks on a nice spot, then move to a near by one.

So, I guess that talking as cruising boats as boats adapted to your style of live or Robert's is talking about boats for 1%. cruising is just not that for the vast majority. And even Robert, that is going to cross the Atlantic, is probably,for a month or more at the Canaries, on a marina waiting for a good time for crossing.

Answering to your question I know of a guy that bought a Pogo 12.50 intending to live and cruise there permanently. It would not be certainly the boat I would chose for that if I wanted to live permanently on a boat but regarding load a Pogo is a bit like a cat. If you load it, it will for the same charge, go down on the waterline much less then your boat and if the charge is well distributed, it will have no problem in taking the same charge of an heavier cruising boat. But that is certainly not the spirit neither what a Pogo owner would do, simply because the boat instead of going downwind at 14/16K would only go at 10/12K. That type of guys that sail Pogos like to live light and don't take much charge around.

A last point: the Pogo is not a Med designed boat. It's hull design come from solo racers designed to make transats and to circumnavigate on the trade winds. It on the trade winds that the boat is more at ease. Med designed fast cruising boats are more narrow, more maximized to upwind sailing and to sail against the typical nasty short kind of wave you find there.

Cheers

Paulo

[colemj]

Originally Posted by robert sailor

Get your head out of the Med for a little while and find out what kind of choices most world cruisers make when they decide which boat will be a good choice

Apparently, many of them choose multihulls…

Oh yeah - I just went there…

Mark

[Polux]

Originally Posted by robert sailor

I won't debate that your light weight racer will go by a heavy cruiser downwind however we are talking about cruising boats here, long term cruising boats. You post up pictures of boats that you think will make fast cruisers so we are not talking about pure race boats where every last pound is removed.....
Your lightweight racer loaded up like this will no longer be light weight racer and it will also not be a semi planner unless its really blowing.
If it can't be loaded down as I laid out then it is not a boat that can be considered for serious cruising, sure fine for the Med and your type of sailing but not real world wide cruising.

You really don't know what you are talking about regarding my boat. A racer? Look at the interior:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6YOrqlFjPBY

Regarding "serious" maybe you should read some blogs of sailors that have circumnavigated, while cruising, in fast boats with far less better cruising interiors or water tankage than I have.

For example these guys on a first 40.7 that are not still circumnavigating as had a nice time on Antarctic waters or while passing the horn:
https://drive.google.com/folderview?...VE&usp=sharing
Giebateau: Archief:
Or this young couple that had a blast circumnavigating on an even smaller and faster boat:
Le Voyage de Capado
Or these guys on a Smaller Pogo 8.5 cruising the Atlantic, on both sides of it:
13395 milles d'émotions sur un tour de l'Atlantique à bord d'Apache - Le blog de voilier apache
So as you can see not all like to do "serious" cruising in a heavy slow boat like yours. I suspect that Jim would not like your boat either.

Originally Posted by robert sailor

... No we cruisers don't go home in the winter we keep sailing or we sail to a country outside the hurricane zone which makes many of the racers you post here very poor choices. Get your head out of the Med for a little while and find out what kind of choices most world cruisers make when they decide which boat will be a good choice and then show me pictures of them in Patagonian and the far reaches of the South Pacific.

You have the funny notion that for cruising or having a cruising boat someone was to do it permanently and live on the boat and that is the only way to make "serious" cruising.

Get real, only less (much less) than 1% of all that own and use cruising boats live on the boat and the vast majority has no desire to cruise the Arctic the Antarctic or any remote places. That does not make their cruising less "serious" than the one you seem to like. Only different.

As only a very small fraction likes to cruise in remote places the vast majority of cruising boats are not maximized for it even if many cruise there with main market cruising boats, like that Bavaria 44 that circumnavigated and made the Northwest passage or even in performance cruisers, like that First 40.7 that sailed on the Antarctic and on the Arctic.

There are some modern production boats designed with that in mind, I mean sailing on remote places, what you seem to call "serious" cruising, but certainly yours is not one of them. Your's is only heavy, slow, with an aging design and not properly adapted to situations were the boat needs to be beached for repairs and the hull is not specially strong to resist small growler's impact or other impacts. The boats designed for that are these ones:

Garcia Exploration 45 - YouTube

Allures 45. The ideal bluewater cruiser? - YouTube

They are like and relatively fast, especially the Allures, and very strong. I know a guy that used to cruise extensively on a Mason 44 and now cruise on one of these (a Boreal). He says that his new boat is incomparably better. Well, not to be surprised, the mason is an old design and certainly a good cruiser on its time, but that was long ago and boat design is always improving ;-)

[robert sailor]

Polux is right there are very few cruisers,mostly holidayers that sail and live a board for a few weeks to a few months per year, which is fine but the boat choices are different. The ones with deeper pockets sometimes choose multi hulls, which is fine to.

[colemj]

Multihulls have far more in common with the light designs not considered "blue water" discussed here than they do with the heavier "blue water" designs.

In fact, they are almost exactly those boats in pretty much every design category (spade rudders, thin glass over cores, large windows, big cockpits, modern interiors, etc). Should they also be viewed as unsuitable for serious cruising?

I don't mean for this to go into a multi debate - just wanted to point out that multi's are pretty much built along the lines of the newer mono designs (well, it is actually the reverse, but makes the same point).

Mark

[Polux]

Originally Posted by colemj

Apparently, many of them choose multihulls…
Oh yeah - I just went there…
Mark

Yes, there is probably a bigger percentage of cats among the boats used for "serious" cruising than for other types of cruising (compared with the percentages of monohulls that make "serious cruising"). Maybe it has to do with the price they pay on marinas if they stay the winter there. But there is a difference, while we can find many small monohulls doing "serious" cruising (between 33 and 40ft) almost all cats doing that are bigger ones (42 to 6oft), for safety reasons. There are exceptions on both sides with smaller boats but that's what they are, exceptions, not the rule. Not any problem with a bigger cat but they are expensive and that makes that option not available to all. Great for living aboard full time, better than a monohull, size for size, no doubt about that.

[robert sailor]

I,m going to take back the word serious as it was a poor choice and replace it with full time. The fat slug Moody 42 sailed from Gibraltar to the Canaries in a little over 4 days, 2 days of light winds and 2 days of stronger winds,the last 2 days we covered 342 miles with a little help at times from a favourable current, not bad for a fat ass cruiser.

[colemj]

My point was on design and build of multis, not size. In regards to size, this thread has held up the Bene 50 as a poster child, and almost all of the boats discussed have been >45'. The actual boats owned by many of the contributors to this thread are 45'+.

The reason few are out cruising in multi's <40' is because there have been almost none of them being built in the past 20yrs. I wouldn't say it is for safety reasons - lots of 35-40' multis have been built for, and are sailing, the open oceans quite safely.

Mark

[neilpride]

Originally Posted by colemj

Multihulls have far more in common with the light designs not considered "blue water" discussed here than they do with the heavier "blue water" designs.

In fact, they are almost exactly those boats in pretty much every design category (spade rudders, thin glass over cores, large windows, big cockpits, modern interiors, etc). Should they also be viewed as unsuitable for serious cruising?

I don't mean for this to go into a multi debate - just wanted to point out that multi's are pretty much built along the lines of the newer mono designs (well, it is actually the reverse, but makes the same point).

Mark

And yes and no! few cata designs are really awful in their construction , and again , the net dont count or explain all the cases , Lagoon come to my mind with FP folowing the wake!!!

[barnakiel]

Originally Posted by smackdaddy

Well - a few things. On the many-young-sailor/blog/forum/website thing - you're obviously talking to the wrong people. Have you ever heard of Sailing Anarchy? Did you see the crowd mix at the last AC in SF?

On the European Retrospective thing - if that's the case, why are all the newest, coolest yacht designs coming out of Europe?

So, your prose is impressive, but not very accurate.

You can call the younger ARC participants and other young people who are right now in LP getting ready for their (often first) crossing "the wrong people". I will stick with calling them the young cruisers. They are representative of the genre.

SA is not a cruising blog. It is a racing blog. I will not call them "the wrong people" I will call them the racing people. I am an (ex-) racer too. I follow SA, I would not mix SA with cruising even though I always say cruising benefits from racing. It is a parasitic relationship though.

Good question with the designs! They are not all that much coming from (all) Europe as from France, and a handful from Scandinavia too. Italians are doing good job at the Berlusconi / tax evasion end too.

I think maybe the French are doing what they are doing due to their smashing blue water dominance over last decade. This technology and the mindset trickles down to the mass market. Interestingly, they are this good because they are in the make it and break it mode. Just as shipwrights used to improve the boats since ages. Sure, this takes heaps of cash. Just imagine what boats we could design here if we did not have to rescue our Greek Titanic from sinking!

Thank you for your kind words on my prose. It is hard to write in a foreign language and twice as hard when you are living in a place when another foreign language is what you use everyday. I am still working on the accuracy thing, it is a process ;-)

Love,
b.